Here's my first pass at something resembling a weapons list for 2nd edition, pretty much culled from the 1st edition game and sourcebooks. The objective is to provide the players with a list of period-appropriate weapons. I've also included my "weapon picks" option that I through out there in one of the other forum threads as an option. I don't expect a lot of people will use it, but I like to keep track of these things anyway. :)
Let me know what you think, and if there is anything I need to add to the list.
You could simplify it a bit more and say the characters get Weapon Pool 2/background and point of wealth and just associate a cost of small =1, standard =2, and heavy =3 or 4.
Otherwise it seems reasonable.
You could also use this for weapon damage differences. This may be too harsh but something along the lines of:
Small Weapon: Considered to have 2 additional Raises for Initiative Order
- Damage: Number of Raises spent -1 (must spend minimum of 2 raises)
Standard Weapon: Considered to have normal Initiative
- Damage: Number of Raises spent (must spend 1 raise)
Heavy Weapon: Considered to have 1 less Raise for Initiative Order
- Damage: 2+Number of Raises spent (must spend 1 raise)
Thanks, Harlequin.
Yeah, I could do all that with weapons, but I'd rather not at this stage. The game just went to the printers. None of us have seen the final version yet. And I think we all need to play a few game sessions before we start deciding what is wrong with the game as written. Really, this was sketched out when a few people complained that there was nothing preventing players from all starting with a brace of 6 pistols and just mowing through the opposition.
Now, I do think it would be cool to put some details to the national variant weapons (Highlands Claymore, Avalon Longbow, Vodacce Throwing Knives) but again I want to get a feel for how the game plays first before I start doing that. So for purposes of this aid – which I hope will be helpful, to new players and GMs especially – I'm going to leave any details (or opportunities) to the individual GMs. Everyone who is part of the kickstarter has the whole 1st ed library anyway and can look up each of these weapons if they choose to, so I don't feel a lot of pressure.
I'm thinking the next draft is going to include the different Duelist academies and their associated weapons, to make referencing those even easier. At some point, I'm also thinking of including "kits" (ala D&D 5e) that players can choose for basic equipment, but that's not at the top of my list right now. I also realize I haven't included any of the Crescent or Cathay weapons on the lists. Should I?
For those of you with more experience with 7th Sea than I, and because I know if I try to run it with my group at least one player will ask, what's generally been the attitude for allowing duckfoot or pepperbox pistols (both available in the Earth-equivalent era) in 7th sea weaponry? For those not familiar with old school firearms, duckfoot pistols generally had multiple barrels spread like a fan (or duck's foot, hence the name), that all fired at once in a sort of shotgun spray, and pepperbox had multiple barrels that had to be hand rotated into position to be fired (with flintlock varieties needing to be reprimed as well). Or for that matter, even the simple 2-3 barrel flintlock with one trigger per barrel?
Oh wikipedia!
Pepperbox pistol: the concept was introduced much earlier. In the 15th century, several single-shot barrels were attached to a stock, being fired individually by means of a match. Around 1790, pepperboxes were built on the basis of flintlock systems, notably by Nock in England and "Segallas" in Belgium. These weapons, building on the success of the earlier two-barrel turnover pistols, were fitted with three, four or seven barrels. These early pepperboxes were hand-rotated.
Duckfoot Pistol: A few hand-held volley guns were also developed during the 18th and 19th centuries. One of the most distinctive was the "duck's foot" volley gun, a pistol with four .45 caliber barrels arranged in a splayed pattern, so that the firer could spray a sizable area with a single shot. The principle behind this type of pistol is one of confrontation by one person against a group; hence, it was popular among bank guards, prison wardens and sea captains in the early 19th century.
So no, I probably wouldn't let anyone start out with one of these unless it really made sense to their character. Basically, these are trying to circumvent the whole 5 Raises to reload rule. As such, the only way I would allow them is as a reward for a story. Same with the double-barrel turnover pistol. The Duckfoot pistol seems too out of period for inclusion – unless you want to have a gunsmith for the Invisible College cook one up.
I don't think either of these would have been available much in 1668 (What I could find shows that there were some very early (larger) versions in the 1500's but then the more handheld versions didn't really pick up until the mid 1700's. If you have some other examples, that would be great. That said, if the character's concept is around this, perhaps they are part of the Invisible College or have a way to have a unique one created. I don't think I'd let these become widely available. There would probably be some type of 'malfunction' condition when using it also (Maybe everytime it's fired, there's a 1-2 Raise Consequence of it backfiring or something). I'd say 1 Raise for the Pepperbox since it would still take 1-2 Raises to spin the barrel for the next shot (Though far less than reloading) and perhaps 2 Raises for the Duckfoot since you're exploding a lot of powder at once (Assuming it's the kind that fires simultaneously)
I would definitely reward creativity as long as it doesn't become a balance issue (The one downside to pistols is slow reload or needing to carry many)
John
Hmmm...
Knights and Musketeers have:
Ok, I just opened up the Swashbuckling Adventures corebook and...I have some additions to make. :)
Dave brings up a good point about the Duckfoot. If it's dividing the damage up over multiple targets (So you slit your raises up and not each target takes the number of raises you spend) it's not really that big of a deal. If it's designed to be "I spend 3 raises and do 3 damage to 3 people due to 3 barrels", that's an issue."
Ok, so I see the Pocket Pistol and the Duckfoot Pistol are in the Swashbuckling Adventures corebook. The former is a one-shot pepperbox derringer. The latter looks pretty tactical in execution.
I'm not going to include these in the arsenal because at some point, these weapons demand a certain differentiation. The Pocket Pistol, for instance, doesn't do much damage but is easy to conceal. Ok, not really sure what to do with that. The Duckfoot distributes damage across an arc. No idea there either. Putting together special equipment seems to be contrary to the design of the new edition, so I'm going to leave them off for now.
I am, however, adding the custom rapiers and some of the national specialized weapons (Zweihander, et al). I'm not doing anything to distinguish what makes these items special or important, though. Personally, I would treat these as a story reward.
Blu
The Duckfoot could be as simple as "Each time you use the Attack Action with the weapon, you can distribute the Raises for damage between up to 3 targets near one another" (conceptually near one another might need some defining but it shouldn't be too bad)
Oh sure! I don't mean to discourage people from doing just that. By all means, go at it. I'm just not going to add those things to this document right now. But yeah, a lot of this stuff should be a snap to recreate in 2nd edition once we get our heads wrapped around how everything fits together.
A Pocket Pistol could give a bonus die to conceal, but not do an automatic dramatic wound like a pistol or musket.
I remember when I mentioned to my players that weapons do the same damage now, one of them didn't like it, another one love it and the third didn't say anything about it. I was not sure how I felt about it. I understood both sides but I thought about it a bit.
I had in mind what Harliquinn wrote, more or less. Giving traits to weapons that helped and hindered the user at the same time (for balancing reasons too). I thought about the first edition. A small weapon did 1k2 damage, a fencing weapon 2k2 and a heavy weapon 3k2 if I'm not mistaken, so I thought of this:
small weapons: You inflict 1 wound for every 2 raises you spend. On the other hand, you prevent 2 wounds for every raise you spend (not a fan of this) or whenever you fight with a small knife, your actions count as a +1 raise for initiative order.
Standard weapons: Cutlasses, rapiers and such are standard weapons and are not modified.
Heavy weapons: Long swords for example. You inflict 3 wounds every 2 raises. E.G: you spend 1 raise, you deal 1 wound. You spend 2 raises, you deal 3 wounds. You spend 3 raises, you deal 4 wounds. You spend 4 raises, you deal 6 wounds. However, whenever you attempt to parry, you must spend 2 raises for every wound you want to prevent (Also not a fan of this option) or your actions count as a -1 raise for initiative order.
I haven't given it a serious thought though. Like you all said, the final version has not been printed yet so there may be some changes to things like these. Furthermore, toying with damage this way also meant toying with all of the duelists' manoeuvres and I didn't want to make my life more complicated :P
Carlo,
i understand the sentiment, but I'm not really sure yet that the game really needs that degree of verisimilitude (yet, anyway). For one thing, it flies in the face of the design philosophy behind the game: you are the weapon, not your gear. Also consider that most of your heavy combatant types are going to be duelists, specializing in their weapon(s) of choice. They are regularly going to be slashing, lunging, and beating their opponents. How would these raise req. affect them? Should they effect them? Should the duelist with a pair of daggers be any more or less deadly that the brutish Vesten with Leegstra? Plus suddenly you've created an arms race. Small weapons just aren't desirable when you can have a standard or heavy weapon. That's usually offset by a variety of tactical factors, but the new edition doesn't have many mechanisms for doing that.
If I was going to handle this sort of distinction, I would probably make it an Advantage, not a property of the weapon itself. That seems to be more in keeping with the sentiment behind the game.
I agree with you completely. That is why I'm content with it either way.
I can accept that the weapon is the player, that they are on the same level of "badassness" as Berek, Vilanova, Reis and so on. Actually, after I wrote that I realized that I would have to change Brawl too and with the way the system has been simplified (not a bad thing, those combat scenes like Salamanca said where horrible with 1st ED in terms of duration) it would turn out to be more complicated for me and my players.
Why did I say that I understand both sides? One of my players, the one who didn't like it, told me that heroes being "weapons" and advantages boosting styles are character related and not weapon related. A character is supossed to be that way but you can't say the same for the object he is using to fight with. He simply said: It doesn't feel right that a dagger does the same damage as a two-handed sword. Realistically speaking he is right but this setting is not supossed to be realistic (to an extent).
By the way, these distinctions already exist. Advantages like "fencer", "dead-eye" and others do what you were talking about, which is something I totally love. I doubt I house-rule damage in any way, it is too much of a hassle and, like you said, the sentiment behind the game would stray too much.